CHAPTER 8

Rose raced through the woods, paying no heed to the wind moving through her furs and the fallen leaves whooshing as her movements scattered them. She paid no heed to the beautiful sound of the crickets and the hooting owl, all things she had always loved about the night but they held not a ounce of her attention.
Something was in the air, in the clearing she raced towards. She could feel the coldness and the bitterness that came with it.
And it made her scared.
She was a woman who had seen her own share of the good and the bad in life. She had married her assigned mate by the moon goddess and had known what it meant to love and be loved, gone through series of miscarriages and trauma before she finally had a son. She had witnessed the brutal nature of war as other packs tried to usurp her mate because she could not give him a heir before the moon goddess finally allowed a seed to hold in her womb. She had seen that seed lost his way before he left the world.
She had watched as her mate slipped away and she had watched as the only fruit of her womb also did the same.
Through all these, she had not known fear.
She knew the joy, pain and sorrows of the world but she had never experienced the coldness beckoning her towards the clearing and she did not want to imagine what she was going to find.
She did not have to imagine.
She knew what she would find.
She had been blessed by the Moon goddess to be able to make premonitions in some situations, like the one she was running towards.
She could smell her grandson as she continued towards the clearing but it was faint, meaning he had been there the night before.
Had he felt the same beckoning?, she asked herself as she stopped in the clearing, the bitter cold making her furs stand on end. Her head felt heavy and cloudy.
It was Adam, her dead son.
Her old heart ached for him. Her poor boy.
She remembered the happy child she had nursed with her mate. He had grown up not to be the best of men but he had not been bad. He had loved his pack and the pack had loved him too. It had only been right that the Moon goddess chose him as Alpha after his father's death. And he had served the pack well.
Until the ''pale one'' came along.
She had disrupted their peaceful existence. She had destroyed Rose's only son, bringing out the beast in him and making him an unhappy man till he met his end. Her son had known no peace until the day he died and she had watched, helplessly as his hatred had consumed him beyond all else.
And it seemed, like it still consumed him even in death.
Her son had believed the Crier was chosen for him by the Moon goddess but she knew he had only allowed his manhood to direct him because of the woman's beauty and fragile nature.
Rose had had her premonitions and she had warned her child but he had refused adamantly, overruling her concern. She had been his mother but mother or not, he had been her Alpha and could veto her concerns. And she had watched his destruction with pain in her heart.
She could feel his angry presence in the clearing, the same feeling she had been having all day as she moved around the house. She guessed he had been loitering around, refusing to find peace because of his need for vengeance.
She did not need her premonitions or anything to know that one. It was something she had always known. The vengeance had always been in his eyes while he was alive whenever he looked at Asher.
So, it was understandable if his cold bitterness was most evident in the clearing.
The place belonged to Asher, his place of peace and escape.
It had always been as the boy grew up in the midst of the ridicule and hatred of the pack. In the clearing, he had found his peace and built the impenetrable walls around his heart and mastered the nonchalant act of brushing off the hatred of the pack. In the clearing, he had learned to wear the frigid mask he presented to the world.
But she knew behind that facade, he was a lonely little boy begging for love with a lot of love to give, even if he did not know it yet.
He was a survivor, a warrior like her own son never was and she was going to keep rooting for him and protecting him in any way she could.
Rose did not want to acknowledge the presence of Adam, she did not want to speak to him. After all, he was dead and her conviction was that the dead do not speak to the living. They were worlds and spaces apart already and she was not going to be a part of whatever sick vengeance he was seeking.
But against her better judgement, she felt the need to utter these words; "I will protect him, even with my dying breath."
The sleeping trees around the clearing danced unnaturally, making the frigid air permeate her furs.
She had enraged him but she did not care. She turned and raced back home, the sick howling of the wind chasing right behind her.
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Adam raged as the white wolf raced away but he could do nothing. He was just a ghost, and without substance. He wanted to chase after her and crush her neck or her skull. But that was impossible without a body.
He felt betrayed by his own mother.
She had always loved the boy, that much he knew but he had never expected her to pick him over her own son.
All day, he had waited to call her to the clearing. She had the gift of the Moon goddess and he knew she could feel him but he had done all that for nothing.
His own mother had vowed to protect his sworn enemy and he could not be more angry.
Maybe it was her own way of paying back for disobeying her while he was alive.
She had strongly opposed his mating to the Crier, had begged him then threatened him, using all tactics within her means but he had silenced her with his power as her Alpha.
The day he had been joined to the Crier, his mother had grudgingly accepted her and treated her like family. Even when Rose had found out about her betrayal and she had ridiculed his name before his pack, she had still continued to treat her like family. He knew his mother had taken one look into the eyes of the bastard child and fallen in love.
But he never knew the love was greater than that which she had for him. He got enraged the more he thought about it.
The bastard, he was living a good life. He had all he ever worked for and he had even taken from him the love of his mother.
He swore he was going to get his vengeance, at whatever cost.
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"And may I ask why you had to wait till the last moment to tell me that?," Asher asked, more like hissed through his teeth as he stared down his errant secretary cum mate.
"I forgot," she replied him sharply, enraging him the more.
"Who doesn't have a passport in this century for goodness sake?," he hissed through his teeth again, conscious of their audience, Mark.
Asher had thought she was messing with him when she told him she did not have a passport on getting to the airport. He had actually laughed at her childish way of getting out of the trip. Then, he had realized at the deadpan look on her face that she was not kidding and he had gotten pissed but had to maintain his cool in front of his Beta.
She continued to stare at him mutinously and he could not help but wonder if she had been laughing like crazy when he had been enforcing his authority that she came along on the trip.
What a fool he had been and all the while, she had her trump card hidden. She had even made a bigger fool of him by coming to the airport.
"Why does she need to come on the trip by the way?," Mark asked then regretted it almost immediately as Asher threw him a quelling look. He raised his hands, palms out in surrender.
He looked back at his mate, trying to guess what was going on in her mind. He did not want to leave for days without her but he had no choice.
"I'll be back," he muttered and headed to board the plane.
"How did she get a job without a passport? Human resources know that secretaries have to travel with you most of the time and having their documents ready is one of the prerequisites for employment. I wonder how she got past all that and got the job," Mark said conversationally as they made themselves comfortable on Asher's private plane but he just threw him another dirty look.
And that gave Mark the answer he wanted. Obviously, his friend had recruited her. He hid his face behind his hand to hide his knowing smile.
Asher was seething, his hot, private plans for London ruined before his eyes. He was used to things almost always going his way, used to being in control.
But one slip of a human girl was breaking that chain.
He could not wait to be back from his trip. Then he was going to make her regret messing with him.
Mark watched his friend with questions running through his mind. Was the secretary the one? Had Asher felt the unbreakable attraction for another person caused by the Moon goddess or was he just messing around with the girl? He could not satisfy his curiosity because of the look on Asher's frigid face.
If the Moon goddess involvement was the case, it dawned on Mark that the latest development was going to push his tittering sister over the edge and he felt his heart rate pick up in fear.
The atmosphere was gloomy for a long while until Mark started a conversation to bring himself out of his awful mood.
"Hey lover boy, don't look so gloomy. Technology has made it so good you could always talk to her," he said hoping to correct the mood in the plane.
"Shit!" Asher became more livid.
"Wait! Don't tell me you don't have her number," when Asher did not reply to that he had his answer and he burst out laughing.